They should be in jail, but you know they’ll never see the inside of a court as defendants.

Political hardball played in response to Bush’s imperious dealing with Congress. Peolsi’s response is appropriate and long overdue. Better late than never.

“A Tale of Three Lawyers” by Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)

An honest editor might change that to:

Despite reality, Bush continues to lie.

E. J. Dionne Jr. – The Street on Welfare – washingtonpost.com
Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.

The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard. They have lost “confidence” in each other, you see, because none of these oh-so-wise captains of the universe have any idea what kinds of devalued securities sit in one another’s portfolios.

These clowns on Wall St. and their stooges in Washington who turned conservatism on its head are the ones responsible for the mess.

Five years on, Bush again talks of Iraq victory | U.S. | Reuters
President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he had no regrets about the unpopular war in Iraq despite the “high cost in lives and treasure” and declared that the United States was on track for victory.

And exactly what would Iraq look like in this iteration of his standard victory speech? It’s changed enough times that I’ve lost track.

Bush Warns House on Surveillance – New York Times
With the House moving toward a vote on electronic surveillance legislation that the White House has said falls far short of its requirements, President Bush warned legislators strongly Thursday morning against passing what he called “a partisan bill that will undermine American security.”

There is no issue affecting our ability to listen to terrorists. The real issue is the telecom immunity provision that would prevent the public from knowing the extent to which the Bush administration broke the law.

Here’s another gem:

“House leaders simply adopted the position that class-action trial lawyers are taking in the multibillion law suits they have filed” against the phone companies, he said. This “would undermine the private sector’s willingness to cooperate with the intelligence community, cooperation that is essential to protecting our country from harm.”

The lawyers helping the EFF in this case are working pro bono. And we don’t need “willingness to cooperate” with lawful court orders, they’re not optional. He must be talking about willingness to once again break the law. There’s no need to shield the telecoms, they already have immunity for acting in good faith to comply with a government request. The only people it protects are the policy makers who asked the telecoms to break the law in the first place. It’s not telecom immunity were talking about here, it’s Bush immunity.

The Washington Monthly sets out to end the debate on torture by presenting a series of short essays from people across the political spectrum on why torture is, in fact, bad. The real tragedy here is that is necessary to make this point in the USA in the 21st century.

Here’s a quote from the essay by Bob Barr (he’s not your typical dirty hippy, liberal peacenik):

This administration has gone beyond even the Bizarro World standard of declaring up to be down or left to be right. Not only is torture not torture, but there exists insufficient clarity even to know what is torture so we can determine whether an interrogation technique is torture or not. While the extreme sophistry and word gamesmanship practiced to a fine art by this administration might make a high school debating coach proud, it does great disservice to the notion that we exist in a society in which there are rules and norms of behavior with clarity and definitiveness and in which government agents as well as the citizenry are held to standards of behavior. This is not something of which we as Americans should be proud, and the use of torture will come back to haunt us in ways this administration apparently either doesn’t realize or simply doesn’t care about.

Kenneth M. Duberstein (former Reagan Chief of Staff) & Richard Armitage (Deputy Sec Def):

We will not win the war on terror merely by being brutal or tough. We must build policies that are first and foremost effective. Torture undermines our effectiveness in this struggle because it debases us. It reduces us to the same brutality as our enemies, and it alienates people around the world who, as General Colin Powell wrote, are “beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.”

America must keep itself free and secure by explicitly and unequivocally rejecting torture.

Across its history, America has been many things: a beacon of hope, the arsenal of democracy, a champion of human rights, and a liberator. In this long litany, there is no room for torture. It is not what we are about as a country.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Basically: borrow around a trilllion from the Chinese to give Iran a new client state next door, occupy it for the next thirty years, and still keep oil at $106 a gallon barrel. Yes: lots to debate.

Death, strategic and financial disaster, way to go Bushie.

Hullabaloo – by dday
The intelligence leadership has been caught in an enormous lie, making false claims about lost surveillance gathering for purely political reasons. This cannot possibly be an isolated incident. Of coure, we KNOW it’s not an isolated incident. And indeed, many of the employees in the civil service who directed these lies and misstatements, not those at the top but the functionaries, will still be working in their same posts under a potential Democratic Administration. It needs to be extremely clear from the very beginning that they must be rooted out, expunged and turned over to the legal system for a determination. It should be a key part of the Democratic nominee’s platform. Only then can we truly “turn the page,” as our front-runner is likely to say.

In the interim, it has to be clearly stated: the Bush Administration overtly and admittedly lied about lost intelligence to bully the House into expanding executive power. This is a memorable episode.

I find my reaction is much the same, why is bush still in office?

Bush will ignore more of Harry Reid’s and Nancy Pelosi’s laws
No, in America we go to court to determine if laws unconstitutionally infringe on the president’s powers. The president doesn’t just get to decide by himself, especially when he’s a blithering idiot. No one in America gets to decide which laws do and don’t apply to them. That’s a judge’s job. But George Bush and the Republicans don’t believe in judges, they don’t believe in the rule of law.

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 01/30/2008 | Commentary: Only 11 months to go
Meantime, out on the campaign trail, what pass for the political heavyweights in both parties are busy bashing each other around the head and shoulders in a desperate battle to win the White House and inherit all that George W. hath wrought and will leave behind. Such gluttony for punishment might be cause for psychiatric intervention.

He believes he’s simply not bound by the constitution (over congressional oversight) in any meaningful way.

Sully points out that there was an HIV positive woman at the SOTU address whose very presence is a violation of US immigration laws barring HIV positive people from entering the country. Naturally since the Shrub needed a prop the let her come in to be a cute cut away shot during the comments on US aid to fight HIV. You can come to the US if you serve a political purpose, but if you actually wanted to visit on your own or god forbid actually immigrate, hell no.

Crooks and Liars » Jay Rockefeller on FISA: Bush is committing Political terrorism: Cloture vote fails

Short story is that the GOP fell well short of their pathological attempt to play a national security issue for political advantage. The cloture vote in the Senate failed, so they’ll actually get to discuss amendments.
I’m certain that Bush will accuse the democratic majority of stalling the “Protect America Act” that he claimed to be so important, yet was willing to let expire in a game of political chicken. I guess we’ll hear Bush whine about it during his SOTU speech tonight. Stay tuned…

Bush would like to negotiate a long term agreement with Iraq, including security and training assurances without going to the Senate for ratification of a formal treaty between the nations. Why would he want to do that (other than a long standing hatred of anything that smells like oversight)? Because treaty ratification would require a 2/3 majority vote in the Senate and is therefore unlikely to pass in the face of massive public opposition to a long term presence in Iraq. Why should the dupes paying for the mess have any say at all?